How to Ask Your Boyfriend to Eat the Booty

Five women who've done it—and a sex expert—weigh in.

Sep 3, 2015

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True fact: I’ve never tossed a woman’s salad before. However, I suppose if I was with someone and she asked me to, I totally would. Hey, I’ll try anything once. Plus there’s gotta be something to it, otherwise it wouldn’t’ be such a hot topic out there in the zeitgeist. I bet it tickles!

Although analingus (that’s the technical term) is a burgeoning practice that’s on its way to becoming commonplace sexual exploration, it still comes with a tinge of taboo—which means it can be kind of awkward to ask for.

"I think the best way to begin is to sit down and casually ask your partner what he thinks about sexual act X, Y, or Z,” says Christie Hartman, Ph.D., a Denver-based behavioral scientist and author of It's Not Him, It's You: The Truth You May Not Want—but Need—to Hear. “Keep it impersonal: ‘What do you think about people doing that?’ not ‘Would you do that?’ This opens a dialogue about the issue and allows you to take his temperature, so to speak. Some guys are adventurous; some guys aren't—although many are persuadable.

He'll most likely ask why you want to know, at which point Hartman recommends saying anything from, "I've wondered about it," to, "I want to try it if you're up for it." "This whole process could take place over time, especially if it's something pretty far outside his usual repertoire," she says.

Curious how this process has played out with real women? Here, five women share how they asked their partners to toss their salads—and how the guys responded.

“My boyfriend was out of town, and we were doing a little bit of sexting for the first time. It was really hot, and I felt like we got a little more adventurous than we normally would because we were trying to spice things up to compensate for our not being in the same physical location. The morning after our sexting adventure, I told him I wanted to see what analingus was all about. He was still basking in the afterglow of the night before, and he said he’d gladly ‘tongue punch my fart box’—a way of describing analingus that made me laugh out loud. [Writer’s note: we can stop trying because nothing will ever be better than this phrase.] We tried it as soon as he got home. It felt pretty good, and I returned the favor. I felt like if I was going to ask for it, I should try giving it, too.”

“I wanted to get my butt licked. It was a recent development. I probably never would have developed that desire on my own, but I kept reading about it, and I became curious. Butt curious, I guess? One night, after my boyfriend and I had had sex, I told him I wanted to maybe try it some time. Without another word, he went underneath the covers and went after my butthole like he was leaving for war the next morning. I wasn’t expecting it to happen right then, but he does have an impressively brief refractory period.”

“I knew the main thing with my boyfriend would be that he’d say it was gross, which I could easily counter with, ‘Well, sucking your d*ck is kind of gross, too, but we all make sacrifices for the one we love.’ Then he would say that it seemed like a health risk. So I came up with a plan. I sent him a text that said, ‘Tonight?’ with a few cute emojis and a few links to articles about how to prepare your rear end for a tongue so that it’s clean and not unsafe. It worked, and wow, I would recommend trying it. It feels amazing.”

“A lot of things you try during sex happen without actually saying that you want your partner to do it to you. Instead of asking for it, I used body language and some subtle pushing of his head to my anal area. It worked, and it’s really not much different from when a guy let’s you know he wants you to suck his d*ck by subtly pushing your head down to his penis.”

“I brought it up when my husband and I were in the middle of foreplay. I’d just gone down on him, so he was pretty excited—and I just said I wanted him to put his tongue in my ass. He went for it, probably because he didn’t want to lose momentum by discussing it; that might have derailed his plans to have sex.”

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